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Why aren't there a huge array of different animals, at various stages of evolution, walking around?
<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END-->This doesn't prove that one evolved from the other. <!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
They don't necessarily have to. One of the amazing things about natural selection is convergent evolution. This is the evolving of unrelated species to fill the same ecological niche, giving them the same attributes. For instance in australia there were no land mammals apart from bats, yet marsupials evolved to fill the same ecological niches that exist here, making them looking almost identical in some cases, e.g. the native australian rat looks like a european one but is a closer relative of the kangaroo. Conversely there is a type of rodent in Mexico that looks like a kangaoo but is a mammal. The same goes for eyes evidence of 40 indepentent evolutions here.....
Tecnically your right, darwins theory is widely accepted as fact due to the overwhelming body of evidence, but not proven or even pr
Anyway - these taxonomic diagrams do show that we are at least RELATED to sponges in a genetic evolutionary sense if not DESCENDED from them. This is far from irresponsible and is, in fact, generally accepted theory on the matter.
Tecnically your right, darwins theory is widely accepted as fact due to the overwhelming body of evidence.
Seriously though, if a certain sucessful mutation in a species makes them better at exploiting limited resources, they will thrive while the predecessor will perish, if the mutation allows the animal to occupy a new niche, they can co-exist.
Or to swim underwater like a fish.
The diagrams that I was talking about did not do comparisons of physical taxonomy but specifically genetic and evolutionary timeline comparisons. Apologies for any confusion caused. By doing genetic comparisons it is possible to measure how "close" different species in terms of their DNA and also to estimate the evolutionary timelines between their divergence
By whatever means cats and humans came into existance, a spine seemed to be a good idea, so it became a common element.
So why are there many types of animals (invertrabates etc) that have'nt been 'blessed' with this common element then?
I can understand how it is possible to see how similar species are by comparing DNA, but I fail to see how it is possible to 'estimate evolutionary timelines'
The various forms of vertebrates developed backbones which helped them to adapt to their specific environments. It doesn't necessarily make them "better" or "more evolved" than invertebrates or other organisms which adapted differently to their own environments.
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